Theres a book for everything. Including getting kids to pitch in the housework. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1593375085/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1453979813&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=help+around+the+house&dpPl=1&dpID=51RWSAMN00L&ref=plSrch
I’m afraid I’ve lost momentum on decluttering recently, but I managed to do a little today and between that and rearranging now actually have one empty drawer in my desk and one empty drawer in my dresser. I will try to resist the temptation to just shove a bunch of random junk into them.
I also wanted to share a couple of thoughts that have helped me overcome guilt about getting rid of things.
When the item is in good condition, but not something I actually use/like:
Remember that things that are in good condition are things that someone else could be putting to good use right now. Donate it to Goodwill or a charity thrift shop and let them sell it to someone who will appreciate it. Aside from taking up space, the longer you hang on to a good condition item that you’re not even using the greater the odds that something will happen to damage it. A thrift shop isn’t going to want something that’s moth-eaten, mildewed, fell over and broke, etc.
When an item is in such BAD condition that no one else would want it:
I sometimes have a harder time with this one, because I hate to think of something winding up in a garbage dump when I could at least theoretically still get some more use out of it. But I read something in a book (can’t remember which one) that has helped with this a bit. While caring about the environment is noble, you’re not going to save the earth by keeping junk in your home. All you’re doing is turning your home into a garbage dump. Recycle what junk you can, and throw away the rest.
I have been getting my ass in gear for the past few weeks. My impetus is two-fold: trying to get The Boy (I.e. the only other person in the house who will clean up) ready to move out for college, plus I’m finally getting the yards presentable, so the house looks that much more disgraceful by comparison.
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve taken off the mountain of recycling from the back porch, taken 2 pickup truck loads of garbage to the tip, took another truckful to the charity shop, and found the floor and tabletops in the living room and dining room. (The buffet still has a protective layer of junk mail and school papers and crap, though. Baby steps.) I cleared the junk corner in the utility room, and The Boy hung up a rack for the brooms and mops and stuff. Almost all of the laundry has been folded, and the folded stuff is put away.
I have taken two large sealed bins of household items for the kid’s apartment up to the storage at the farm. Yes, he will need these sheets and spatulas and skillets and saucepans, but they don’t have to live in the hallway. The bins of Christmas decorations have also been banished to the country - except for the out of season wreath still hanging on the front window. A wren has housed herself there, and I don’t care enough about the neighbors’ opinions to make her homeless before the babies fledge. (And, given the amount of relief I feel by reclaiming clean space in my house, I would happily spend $30 per month on a small storage closet at the nearest UStore if I didn’t have access to another convenient option. Cheap therapy!)
My current system is carrot – stick, plus trying to break from perfectionism. I spend 15 minutes cleaning a room. What’s done in 15 minutes is good enough for today, and better than 15 minutes ago. And if I hit 3 rooms, I have permission to reward myself with an hour in the garden. (And so far, the roses are blooming, the gardenias and hydrangea and azaleas are leafing out nicely, and the palms are growing faster than the dandelions!) If I finish the laundry tonight, I get to plant the kitchen garden tomorrow - hooray!
Well, have a mini-vacation and I’m planning to use part of it to catch up and organize the paperwork, which is the most pressing current issue in the household. Hope to reports back soon with good news, but meanwhile some encouragement is always welcomed!
(Happy to say that I have been able to maintain some good practices regarding other things, but the paperwork is threatening to become a problem.)
How’s thepaerwork coming, Broomstick?
>sigh<
I’ve been procrastinating, I admit - which, of course, why it’s looking a mess right now. I gave myself a deadline of the end of my mini-vacation which is tomorrow.
Oddly enough, two of the ways I’ve procrastinated are 1) cleaning up the yard and getting the garden going and 2) cleaning out the refrigerator and freezer. So, the upside is that I am, in fact, cleaning up/reducing clutter but not as I declared I would two days ago.
So, I have today and tomorrow to do better.
That’s not procrastinating, it’s reprioritizing.
For the garden, yes - yesterday was the ideal weather for what I needed to do, but today and tomorrow we should get a lot of rain, which will help the seeds sprout.
I still need to do the paperwork. As a bonus, when I do that I’ll be able to submit my tax stuff and get my refund, so there’s a money payoff in that, eventually.
I guess the important thing is that SOMETHING is getting cleaned up and organized.
Well, last day of the mini-vacation.
Have to do laundry AND deal with the paperwork today.
If I’m a good girl and do all that there will be fresh, from scratch (as in, I made the stock yesterday from scratch) cream of potato soup for dinner and from-scratch homemade rolls to go with it. I mean, you gotta give yourself an incentive, right? Bless my crockpot.
Gosh darn… after making slow progress interspersed with stretches of maintaining what I had achieved it all went to hell. Having a cancer diagnosis in the family can upend your routine and everything - who knew?
Friends are coming Sunday to help me with… well, everything. Caring for a serious ill spouse, fixing the mess, organizing paperwork, getting rid of a dead couch, imposing order on enough medical supplies to stock a small clinic…
Only one load of dishes left to wash in the sink. Well, at least I got caught up with that…
Old nasty dead couch is gone. Along with perfect skeleton of a deer mouse that apparently expired underneath it some time ago. :eek:
New twin bed/day bed installed in its place.
Much vacuuming commenced, and a half dozen bags of garbage taken to the dumpster.
It’s a start.
Things I have recently learned:
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Getting a cancer diagnosis in the family can seriously derail any and all other plans in the household, including cleaning/organizing.
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Thank goodness for posting here, because it reminded be that despite #1 I did manage to do some significant clean-ups, like getting rid of the dead couch. (YAY!)
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Being down to 1 person in the household does make some parts of cleaning up easier, like I can keep sorting projects spread out on table for days, and no one is “poaching” a spot I do manage to clean up.
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But #3 means I not only have to deal with my stuff, I have to deal with all of HIS stuff now.
This week I making the most progress with paperwork, partly because some of the post-death stuff required fairly immediate attention. But I have also gotten rid of not one but THREE trash bags of old paper and various junk. YAY ME! GO ME!
I have also located a place that buys used books, movies, CD’s, games, vinyl records, etc. I’m not expecting to get rich off of any of it (although it would be nice if it happened…) but as I’ve mentioned before it’s a LOT easier for me to get rid of stuff I don’t want if it gets reused/recycled. Getting a few bucks for it as well is gravy. I want to with the paperwork first, but after that it’s either deal with his clothes or deal with his movies/games that I don’t want. Although if the urge takes me I just might take a break from paperwork sorting/shredding/tossing to bring a bucket of those things over the 2nd hand purchaser.
But sorting through his stuff is WAY hard. Extremely hard.
Is there someone else who can do it? His siblings or friends? There could well be stuff there which they would very much appreciate–but would never dream of asking you for it.
No. There is no one else. No other family. No friends within hundreds of miles (at least, no one I’d trust in my home - some friends are better/closer than others). We’ve both suffered a lot of losses of relatives over the past 10 years.
There are some things going to friends, but I’ll be shipping that stuff to them.
Sorting through the things of someone who’s died is a terribly emotionally difficult job. You’re doing amazingly,** Broomstick**.
I’m doing it bit by bit.
It does help a lot that we discussed what to do with his things before he died. Not all of them, but a lot of them.
My sympathies, Broomstick.
Also – be sure to not hold yourself to a standard of perfection. It may turn out that some things, even things your husband treasured, cannot be passed on as he’d ideally wanted. Do your best, and give yourself a pass on the things that do not work out.
Here’s an example: my father was always interested in astronomy, from boyhood. He’d built, and bought, various telescopes over the years. But back in the 1950’s he’d managed to score a huge metal tube, like maybe two feet in diameter and over 16’ long, which he thought he could turn into the BEST telescope he’d ever have – just as soon as he had time to grind a mirror for it.
Now, for a long time he had one of those jobs where his company would shift him from office to office, state to state, to deal with various crises. He paid to have that tube moved along with us, over and over, through at least seven interstate moves, from east to west coast and back at least twice. Sometimes he’d had basement windows take out and enlarged so the tube could be safely stored until he had the time to make the telescope he dreamed of.
Which never came. My mother stayed in the house where he’d died for nearly twenty years longer, the tube still carefully stored in the basement. Then she died, and I was in charge of dealing with the house.
And in the end, I had to get a scrap metal dealer to come and cut the tube up and haul it away.
Because as much as it had represented a long standing dream of my father, there was just no way it would ever be turned into a telescope. I have a picture of him with it, and the memories, and that had to be that.
I do recommend taking lots of pictures as you deal with stuff. Whether it’s being passed on as he chose or donated or sent to recycling. It feels respectful, to acknowledge that this item had mattered to someone you loved. It can make letting go of the actual objects hurt a lot less.
StarvingButStrong, thank you for the advice re: picture taking. My Dad passed away back in October, and I keep meaning to go through all his stuff in the two rooms he lived in in our home. My husband took his clothes to Goodwill, but the rest of the stuff… it is very hard.
Broomstick, my heart goes out to you.
Are there low-emotional-context things you can just move out wholesale? Things like his clothing, that might help someone else out? I’m making an assumption about that, of course - i.e., he might have had a few favorite garments that you’d like to keep around, but by and large clothes don’t have the same emotional impact as things like games, books, and the like (if I’m off base on that, I apologize).
I know that when my father died, Mom had all his clothes donated somewhere within a month - possibly within a couple weeks. She just didn’t want them around any more. There wasn’t any sorting / organizing involved, just dumping things into bins or whatever.
That would give you more elbow room to sort through your own things, at the very least.
One acid test I use…
How long has that stuff been in the box? Do I even remember what’s in that box?
Stuff is only useful if you know where it is.
There used to be times that I’d buy a cable or tool because I couldn’t quickly find the one I already had.
That resulted in a comprehensive clean out. A box that I haven’t even opened in three years is a prime candidate for throw out. How strong can my attachment be to stuff I haven’t used or looked at in several years? Zero. Throw it out.